leftwikiaorg-20200213-history
2008
2007 2008 2009 Events * United States elections, 2008 ** United States Presidential elections, 2008 ** United States Senate elections, 2008 ** United States House elections, 2008 ** United States gubernatorial elections, 2008 * Daimler-Chrysler introduces the Smart Car in America. Timeline January * January 1: Ethnic election violence continues in Kenya as a mob sets fire to a church, killing about 30 villagers from incumbent "president-elect" Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe. * January 1: Unsuccessful American presidential assassin, Sara Jane Moore, 77, is released from prison. * January 1: John Granville, a 33 year old USAID official, is shot to death with his driver in Khartoum, Sudan. * January 1: Suicide-bomber kills 32 at Shiite funeral in Baghdad. * January 2: Kenyan government accuses Raila Odinga's backers of "ethnic cleansing." * January 2: Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee crosses Writer's Guild picket line to appear on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. The Nixon-like Southern Baptist preacher cum Christian Right standard bearer cares more for his own political ambition thatyn the rights of organized labor. * January 2: Speaking at the E. Stanley Wright Museum, Wolfeboro, NH, Republican presidential candidate Rudi Giuliani makes the following claim: "We have never, ever made up for the damage that was done to our military from the peace dividend taken in the 1990s during the Clinton Administration." In reality, year after year in the 1990s and into the 21st century the U.S. has continued to spend approximately one-half of all the miltiary spending on the planet. * January 2: Republican U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey announces that he has named John H. Durham as Special Prosecutor in the investigation of CIA destruction of videotaped torture sessions of Al Qaeda prisoners. * January 2: Oil briefly hits $100 a barrel price. * January 2: Democratic U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, announces that he had been diagnosed with cancer and would not seek reelection in November. * January 3: Large turnout in the Iowa Party Presidential Nominating Caucuses produces two upsets: : Democratic Party :: Sen. Barack Obama 38% :: John Edwards 30% :: Sen. Hillary Clinton 29% :: Bill Richardson 2% :: Sen. Joseph Biden 1% :: Chris Dodd 0 :: Mike Gravel 0 :: Dennis Kucinich 0 ::: Effective Number of Candidates: 3.134 : Republican Party :: Rev. Mike Huckabee 34% :: Mitt Romney 25% :: Fred Thompson 13% :: Sen. John McCain 13% :: Rudy Giuliani 3% :: Duncan Hunter 0 :: Tom Tancredo 0 ::: Effective Number of Candidates: 4.734 * January 4: Kenyan "president-elect" Kibaki states that he will accept an lection re-run if ordered to do so by a court, whose judges are loyal to his party. * January 5: Wyoming Republican Party Presidential Nominating County Conventions. (The Wyoming Republican Party does not release vote totals, which seems a wee bit illiberal and undemocratic!) : Republican Party :: Mitt Romney (8 or 66.7% delegates) :: Fred Thompson (3 or 25% delegates) :: Duncan Hunter (1 or 8.3% of delegates) :: Sen. John McCain (0 delegates) :: Rudy Giuliani (O delegates) :: Rev. Mike Huckabee (0 delegates) :: Ron Paul (0 delegates) :: Alan Keyes (0 delegates) ::: Effective Number of Candidates: 1.9444 (based on delegate figures) :::: Change in Effective Number From Previous: -2.79 * January 5: Kenyan "president-elect" Kibaki states that he is ready to form a government of national unity to end the violence. * January 5: Presidential election in Georgia. * January 6: Thousands rally in Tbilisi demonstrating against early election results indicating that incumbent Pres. Mikhail Saakashvili would win reelection. According to the Central Elections Commission, with 24% of voting precincts counted, Saakashvili had 48.55% of the vote, and Levan Gachechiladze 26.12%. * January 7: Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga calls off planned protests after meeting with U.S. envoy Jendayi Frazer. * January 8: New Hampshire Party Presidential Nominating Primary Elections. : Democratic Party :: Sen. Hillary Clinton 39% :: Sen. Barack Obama 37% :: John Edwards 17% :: Bill Richardson 5% :: Dennis Kucinich 1% :: Chris Dodd 0 :: Mike Gravel 0 ::: Effective Number of Candidates: 3.120 :::: Change Since Iowa Caucuses: -0.014 (neglible) : Republican Party :: Sen. John McCain 37% :: Mitt Romney 32% :: Rev. Mike Huckabee 11% :: Rudy Giuliani 9% :: Ron Paul 8% :: Fred Thompson 1% :: Duncan Hunter 0 ::: Effective Number of Candidates: 3.759 :::: Change Since Iowa Caucuses: -0.975 (nearly an entire candidate) * January 8: Large UFO seen hovering 300 feet above Stephenville, Texas, 60 miles southwest of Fort Worth, by multiple observers. * January 9: U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the restrictive Indiana Voter ID Law case. Will the Republican majority on the court vote to support the Republican state legislature and governor's effort to suppress the votes of minorities, the poor and the elderly? * January 8-10: African Union chair and president of Ghana John Kufuor attempts to mediate the Kenyan political crisis--leaves Kenya on January 10th and claims that both sides have agreed to work together with an African panel headed by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. * January 10: John Kerry stiffs former running-mate John Edwards to endorse Barack Obama. * California Gov. Schwarzenegger proposes $141 billion state budget cutting 10% public education funding and releasing 22,000 prison inmates. * January 11: Day of Action to Shut Down Guantanamo organized by Witness Against Torture. * January 12: Presidential election in Lebanon. * January 12: Parliamentary election in Taiwan. * January 14: In a typical example of the determination by U.S. News Media to ignore John Edwards's campaign to death in their coverage of the Democratic contest, Cokie Roberts mentions by name Hillary Clinton six times and Barack Obama six times, but John Edwards (who placed second in Iowa) not once. Why the bias? Is it because lazy journalists simply want to tell a simple if fundamentally racist story of Black Man Versus White Woman? Or is it because they want to ignore Edwards' more serious challenge to the power of Big Business? Is Big Media playing a divide and conquer game to protect corporate America? * January 14: Campaigning in the Michigan Republican Primary, Sen. John McCain descends into embarrassingly silly hyperbole by claiming that Michigan "saved the world in World War II" and that its workers are the "most productive workers" in the world. In reality, the Soviet Red Army did the heavy lifting to save Europe from fascism and the United States Navy did the heavy lifting to save East Asia and the Pacific from Japanese militarism. Worker productivity--largely the result of new capital investment--can be measured objectively, and Michigan's workers are today nothing special. * January 15: Michigan Party Presidential Nominating Primary Election and Democratic Beauty Contest (no delegates) Primary Election. : Republican Party :: Mitt Romney 39% :: John McCain 30% :: Rev. Mike Huckabee 16% :: Ron Paul 6% :: Fred Thompson 4% :: Rudy Giuliani 3% :: Uncommitted 2% :: Duncan Hunter 0% :: Tom Tancredo 0% :: Sam Brownback: 0% ::: Effective Number of Candidates: 3.646 :::: Change Since New Hampshire Primary: -0.112 : Democratic Party Beauty Contest :: Sen. Hillary Clinton 55% :: Uncommitted 40% :: Dennis Kucinich 4% :: Chris Dodd 1% :: Mike Gravel 0% ::: Effective Number of Candidates: 2.109 :::: Effective Change Since New Hampshire Primary: -1.02 * January 17: Israeli government announces that it will close all border crossings into Gaza. Blockade intensifies. * January 18: Chess Master Bobby Fischer dies in Reykjavik. * January 18: The firm Stemagen in San Diego claism that it has cloned a human embryo from the skin cells of two men. * January 18: Crusade? Speaking in French, Pope Benedict issues call for religious freedom in Arab countries, saying everyone should have the right to practice their faith openly and to convert to other religions if they wanted. Yet he wants to use the power of the state to support Christianity against secularism in the West. * January 19: Nevada Caucus : Republican Party :: Mitt Romney 51% :: Ron Paul 14% :: John McCain 13% :: Rev. Mike Huckabee 8% :: Fred Thompson 8% :: Rudy Giuliani 4% :: Uncommitted 2% :: Duncan Hunter 0% :: Tom Tancredo 0% :: Sam Brownback: 0% ::: Effective Number of Candidates: 3.211 :::: Change Since Michigan Primary: -0.435 : Democratic Party : Sen. Hillary Clinton 51% : Sen. Barack Obama 45% : John Edwards 4% : Uncommitted 0% : Dennis Kucinich 0% ::: Effective Number of Candidates: 2.15 :::: Change Since Michigan Beauty Contest: -0.045 * January 19: South Carolina Republican Party Presidential Nominating Primary Election. : Republican Party :: John McCain 33% :: Rev. Mike Huckabee 30% :: Fred Thompson 16% :: Mitt Romney 15% :: Ron Paul 4% :: Rudy Giuliani 2% :: Uncommitted 0% :: Duncan Hunter 0% ::: Effective Number of Candidates: 4.016 :::: Change Since Michigan Primary: +0.805 :::: Note that there was actually negative attrition between Michigan and South Carolina in the effective number of Republican candidates! * January 19: Katyusha attack kills 7 Shiite pilgrims in Tal Afar, Iraq. Twin suicide attacks against Iraqi police and U.S. soldiers at the entrance to a police station in Ramadi. * January 20: UN officials in Gaza describe the Israeli blockade as collective punishment of the population. Gaza's only power plant, which supplies a third of territory's electrical supplies, shuts down generators because of fuel shortage. * January 20: Too old to play an action hero Chuck Norris, THE celebrity cheerleader for Republican presidential candidate Rev. Mike Huckabee, slams Republican candidate John McCain for being too old for the job: "If John takes over the presidency at 72 and he ages 3-to-1, how old will he be in four years? Eighty-four years old -- and can he handle that kind of pressure in that job?" (So what does this say about a President Huckabbee's policy on age discrimination?) * January 21: United Nations Relief and Works Agency announces that it would be forced to suspend food aid to 860,000 Gaza residents by January 28-29 Wednesday unless Israel reopens border crossings to allow fuel shipments. Israel is carrying out colective punishment of the Palestinian population of Gaza. * January 21: Suicide bombing in a Sunni village funeral kills 12 and wounds 17. * January 21: Black Monday as stock markets around the planet lose Hundreds of millions of dollars in stock values in panic sell-offs. * January 21: Neo-con former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton is still pining for war against Iran. Speaking at the annual Herzliya Conferfence Bolton "reasoned" that because the U.S. was reluctant to start bombing, Israel might have to initiate the next sequence in the neo-con dream of a Middle East made safe for Isrealis: "One can say with some assurance that in the next year the use of force by the United States is highly unlikely. That increases the pressure on Israel in that period of time... if it feels Iran is on the verge of acquiring that capability, it brings the decision point home to use force." Source * January 21: Pakistani military dictator (and autogolpista) Pres. Pervez Musharraf pledges in Brussels to hold free and fair elections. * January 21: John Edwards triumphs rhetorically over squabbling Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the CNN and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute sponsored Democratic debate. :: EDWARDS: "And I also want to know -- I also want to know on behalf of voters here in South Carolina, this kind of squabbling, how many children is this going to get health care? How many people are going to get an education from this? How many kids are going to be able to go to college because of this? We have got to understand -- you know, and I respect both of my fellow candidates -- but we have got to understand this is not about us personally. It is about... :: (APPLAUSE) ::... what we are trying to do for this country and what we believe in." * January 22: More White House criminality revealed. Denying that it was a deliberate effort to destroy evidence of wrongdoing, White House officials admit that all of its e-mails documenting administration actions in the run-up to the Iraq war have been lost. Just the sort of behavior you expect from white collar corporate criminals. * January 22: Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni fly into Nairobi to try to mediate the political crisis. * January 22: Israel allows small shipments of fuel to Gaza's main power plant. Israel said it would also allow in 132,000 U.S. gallons of generator diesel, as well as some cooking gas, food and medicine, but not gasoline for cars. do you operate an ambulance without gasoline? Crisis builds to bopiling point at the Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt. Egyptian security forces fire in the air and use batons to disperse hundreds of Palestinian protesters. * January 22: U.S. stock markets join world stock markets in collapse of stock prices. * January 23: Responding to economic desperation, Palestinian militants blow openings in the border fence betwen Gaza and Egypt. People and goods begin moving back and forth. * January 24: Tens of thousands of Palestinians flood into Egypt. * January 24: Rep. Dennis Kucinich tells the Cleveland Plain Dealer that he is abandoning his race for the Democrtatic presidential nomination. His campaign hlped to focus attention in the tragedy of second Bush administration foreign policy. * January 24: Neo-cons always protect their own. Paul Wolfowitz, who helped Donald Rumsfeld make a disaster of the occupation of Iraq, was quietly appointed as Chairman of the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board. So are conservatives so bereft of talent that they has to rehabilitate this character? * January 24: Corporate power trumps individual rights to pain relief in the courts. California Supreme Court rules 5 to 2 that private companies can fire employees for consuming medical marijuana. The victim of this legal travesty was Gary Ross, who had presented his employer, RagingWire Inc., his physician's recommendation that he smoke the drug to relieve chronic back pain from three lumbar vertebrae fractured when he fell off the wing of an F-16 as an Air Force mechanic in 1983. * January 24: Kenya will not turn into another Rwanda says Joel Barkan, senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and professor emeritus at the University of Iowa on the Online NewsHour. :: MARGARET WARNER: "Joel Barkan, a quick final question to you. I hate to ask you to do this quickly. But you see people out in the streets with machetes and you hear about killings like this. Could this spin out of control into another Rwanda?" :: JOEL BARKAN: "This question is often asked, but Kenya, I would say emphatically, is not Rwanda. Rwanda was a case of clear genocide, state-sponsored, systematic killing. That's not what's going on." :: MARGARET WARNER: "Of one ethnic group by another?" :: JOEL BARKAN: "Of one ethnic group by another. That is not what's going on here. It's extreme frustration. There is some element of state-sponsored violence, but not in the way that you saw in Rwanda. That's a false parallel. In fact, just the opposite. What needs to be done here is a negotiated power-sharing deal." * January 25: Bush administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey declines to name a special prosecutor to investigate whether the CIA broke the law when it destroyed videotapes of terror interrogations. The nation's chief lawyer isn't interested in official lawlessness. * January 26: Brattleboro, Vermont Select Board votes 3-2 to give town voters the chance to vote on a referendum stating that that President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney should be indicted and tried for war crimes. Chairwoman Audrey Garfield and board members Richard Garrant and Dora Boubalis voted for the measure. * January 25: Hamas members use a bulldozer to make fresh holes in the wall between Gaza and Egypt. * January 26: Lebanese intelligence officer, Capt. Wissam Eid, is killed in a carbombing. * January 26: South Carolina Democratic Party Presidential Nominating Primary Election. Major U.S. News media sources, especially CNN, succeed in turning the primary into a divisive contest about race and gender, onscuring class, war and the environment. : Democratic Party :: Sen. Barack Obama 55% :: Sen. Hillary Clinton 26.5% :: John Edwards 17.6% :: Dennis Kucinich 0.1% :: Joe Biden 0.1% :: Chris Dodd 0 :: Mike Gravel 0 ::: Effective Number of Candidates: 1.237 :::: Change Since Nevada Primary: -.913 * January 29: Florida Presidential Primary Election. : Republican Party :: Mitt Romney :: John McCain :: Rev. Mike Huckabee :: Fred Thompson :: Ron Paul :: Rudy Giuliani ::: Effective Number of Candidates: :::: Change Since South Carolina Primary: : Democratic Party Beauty Contest :: John Edwards :: Sen. Barack Obama :: Sen. Hillary Clinton :: Dennis Kucinich :: Chris Dodd :: Mike Gravel ::: Effective Number of Candidates: :::: Change Since South Carolina Primary: * January 27: Violent chaos spreads in Kenya. Nine are killed in inter-tribal clashes in Naivasha. * January 27: Supreme Court decision in a case brought by human rights groups against the blockade of Gaza orders resumption of fuel deliberies for the main Gaza power plant, with 2.2 million litres per week allowed through. February * February 1: Maine Party Presidential Nominating Primary Election. * February 5: Party Presidential Pimary Elections in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma and Utah. * February 9: Kansas Party Presidential Nominating Caucus; Louisiana Party Presidential Nominating Primary Elections. * February 10: Maine Party Presidential Nominating Primary Election. * February 12: Happy Darwin Day! * February 12: District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia Party Presidential Nominating Primary Elections. * February 19: Hawaii Democratic Party Presidential Nominating Primary Election; Washingtion and Wisconsin Party Presidential Nominating Primary Elections. March * March 16-19: International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases, Atlanta, Georgia * March 22: Presidential election in Taiwan. August * August 1: Total eclipse of the Sun visible in Canada, Greenland, Arctic, central Russia, Mongolia and China. September * September 5: Parliamentary election in Angola. November * November: Presidential Election in Palau * November: Parliamentary Election in Grenada * November: Parliamentary Election in American Samoa * November 15: Parliamentary Election in New Zealand * November 28: Parliamentary Election in Romania Category: Year